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Tuesday, May 26, 2009

What is the Data Retention Directive?(Swedish translation: Datalagringsdirektivet)

The Data Retention Directive Law forces phone and internet operators to store all information they possibly can on their clients. This can be their IP, visited websites, position of mobile phones (thereby being able to track your movement) but also your sent and recieved SMS/MMS messages as well as rung and recieved phone calls.

- Thanks to Elkers for this information.

Over at Kreativrauschen.com I found some information about how thing worked out for Germany in this matter. I'm scared, really:

Starting next year, all communication providers in Germany will have to store all connection data for six months.This includes:

Phone calls: Date, time, length and involved numbers of all phone calls (landline, mobile or VoIP)

In case of mobile phones additionally the location of the phone at the time of the call, the IMSI code of the phone and SMS connection data.

Internet access: IP address, date, time and length of the connection, and the line which was used. (to be clear: not each individual ip connection. Only date and time of your connection to the internet and which ip you were using).

E-mail: e-mail-addresses involved and the header of each e-mail.

How do we stop it?

The very best way to stop this is to express your disapproval of this law by sending e-mails or even calling the EU parlament seat holders and telling them how you think about the matter. It's not weird, many people call and e-mail them already, so you are definetly not the first.

Also, DONT FORGET TO VOTE on a party that clearly stands for The Right to have Privacy and recents this law. My vote will go to Piratpartiet this time, as I think the best way right now to stop this law is by voting on them. Vote before the 7th of June.

This is my assumption:If the Data Retention Directive gets approved, our privacy will be next to nothing. The only way of getting privacy is to stop using devices connected to the internet (cell phones too) and start living underground, where there are no cameras.